Cowards
2022 · 10m · USA
Directed by Mitch deQuilettes
Tones: darkly comic, melancholic, tender
A struggling writer revisits The Wizard of Oz and decides to mount a one-woman show as the Cowardly Lion, hoping the industry will finally look. The film knows exactly how desperate this is.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
The Cowardly Lion as Hollywood survival strategy. That's a metaphor doing actual labor, not just decorating — which is rare enough in shorts that I'll forgive a lot.
Childhood-IP nostalgia weaponized as career strategy — deQuilettes makes the metaphor do double duty as plot mechanism, which is more elegant than Hollywood-thirst pictures usually manage. Frances Ha hustle, sharper teeth.
A struggling writer mounting a one-woman show as the Cowardly Lion to get the industry to look — that metaphor doing double duty as plot mechanism is exactly the right kind of clever. Knows how desperate it is, which is half the craft.